Windows XP Review

[JungleMan]

just installed RC1 just now...
It's bloated but has some great features.

This system has the following specs:
550mhz K6-2
192 MB RAM
20 GB hard disk

First of all, it takes up a whopping 1 GB of hard drive space...that's twice the amount of windows 2000. The new eye candy is nice, for about the 1st 5 minutes, then I HAD to disable most of it (except ClearType which I'll get to later).

I click the Start menu and this huge-ass menu pops up and has most things I would normally find on the desktop on the right side instead, it is really dumbed down...luckily that can all be disabled

The Control Panel is the biggest pain in the ass in XP, it is so dumbed down you can't believe it, and the Users icon pisses me off big-time . You can switch to classic view but you must click that EVERY TIME you want Classic View..

I can't use my Ctrl+Alt+Del+Spacebar which would lock my computer, now I must press Winkey+L to go into fast user switching mode, which effectively does the same thing.

Also, I HATE the menu fading! It really slows down the computer, I had to disable it.

On some of the better parts of XP, it has a great new feature called ClearType, where it smooths all the text, as if it were a book. Works great with some fonts (Verdana and Tahoma), but not too well with others (like Courier New).

Also, I LOVE the new integrated ZIP file support, it shows it as a "compressed folder". It will eliminate the need for WinZip (but not Winace), that won't be too good for them.

The desktop backgrounds and icons totally rule! They are the best and whether I get XP or not I am keeping the backgrounds and possibly the icons!

Taskbar grouping is nice sometimes, but gets on your nerves other times...like if you are conducting 6 IMs at once, there's only ONE AIM item, so if that starts flashing I have to CLICK that, then look at the menu and see who sent me an IM..

But it's great if I'm browsing a lot of web sites at once...

New side panel is very nice, task-oriented, but not something I need...

WMP8 is a little quicker than WMP7, but still not enough for my liking. 6.4 is still in here, you just have to type mplayer2 at the Run dialog.

Windows Messenger is pretty nice...basically just MSN Messenger with a few more features..very streamlined (better than the clunky NetMeeting)

I did not try CD burning (CD burner does not work under any OS, must be repaired).


Overall Rating: 5/10